Ethics Flashcards
Felicific calculus
In Bentham’s ethics, the means of calculating pleasures and pains caused by an action and adding them up on a single scale. The total amount of happiness produced is the sum total of everyones pleasures minus the sum total of everyones pains.
Act consequentialism
Actions are morally right or wrong depending on their consequences and nothing else. An act is right if it maximises what is good.
Value theory
The only thing that is good is happiness.
Equality
No one’s happiness counts more than anyone else’s.
Mill’s happiness
Pleasure and the absence of pain.
‘Happiness is not continuous pleasurable excitement, “but moments of such, in an existence made up of few and transitory pains, many and various pleasures, with a decided predominance of the active over the passive, and having as the foundation of the whole, not to expect more from life that it is capable of bestowing”’.
Eudaimonia
Could be translated as hapiness. Aristotle explains it as “living well and faring well”. According to Aristotle eudaimonia is not subjective so its objective, and is not a psychological state, but an objective quality of someone’s life as a whole. It is the final end for human beings.
The Function Argument
Aristotle’s argument that the human good (eudaimonia) will be achieved by performing our characteristic activity (ergon) well. Traits that enable us to fulfil our ergon, which is rational activity, are virtues (arete).
Categorical Imperative
“Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” (Kant)
Hypothetical reasoning
Working out the best hypothesis that would explain or account for some experience or fact.
Secondary principles
In Mill, moral ‘rules of thumb’ that, if followed, generally produce happiness.
e.g. ‘Tell the truth’.
Mill argues that we have learned secondary principles through human history, through trial and error.
Utilitarianism
The theory that only happiness is good, and the right act (or rule) is that act (or rule) that maximises happiness.
Act utilitarianism
The theory that only happiness is good, and the right act is that act that maximises happiness. Hedonist act utilitarianism understands happiness in terms of the balance of pleasure over pain.
The good will
In Kant, the good will is the will that is motivated by duty, which Kant argues means that it chooses in accordance with reason. It is the only thing that is morally good without qualification.
Utility
The property of an object or action in virtue of which it tends to produce happiness.
Deontology
The study of what one must do. Deontology claims that actions are right or wrong in themselves, not depending on their consequences. We have moral duties to do things which it is right to do and moral duties not to do things which it is wrong to do.
